Back in 2000, in NYC, Weinstein called Traister "a cunt and declared that he was glad he was the 'fucking sheriff of this fucking lawless piece-of-shit town'" and knocked her boyfriend/colleague down "a set of stairs."

So why didn't she out him? And why didn't any of the other journalists who were there report anything? Photos were taken, but never published. Why did all you people shield him, and why should I listen to you now?

Back then, Harvey could spin — or suppress — anything; there were so many journalists on his payroll, working as consultants on movie projects, or as screenwriters, or for his magazine.

He could only do it because you were complicit. Were you all paid off?

I never really thought of trying to write the story myself. Back then, I didn’t write about feminism; there wasn’t a lot of journalism about feminism.

There's been plenty of journalism about feminism for the last 50 years, but why did you need a foundation of plenteous journalism about feminism to write about such beastly behavior?

His behavior toward women was obviously understood to be a bad thing—this was a decade after Anita Hill’s accusations against Clarence Thomas had helped the country to understand that sexual harassment was not just a quirk of the modern workplace, but a professional and economic crime committed against women as a class. But...

The "but" should be, but we the liberal journalists helped everyone forget what we'd learned because it was so important to help Bill Clinton. But Traister's "but" is:

... the story felt fuzzier, harder to tell about Harvey: the notion of the “casting couch” still had an almost romantic reverberation...

Oh, bullshit. Harvey was another liberal, like Bill Clinton, so you pushed the obvious principles to the side and protected him. The only fuzziness is the blur imposed by politics, and once you let that in, you have no principle.

But another reason that I never considered trying to report the story myself... I remembered what it was like to have the full force of Harvey Weinstein — back then a mountainous man — screaming vulgarities at me, his spit hitting my face. I had watched him haul my friend into the street and try to hurt him. That kind of force, that kind of power? I could not have won against that.

Ridiculous. You were afraid of him because of his physical size and strength in an in-person encounter? What the hell is writing for?! You got your distance. He wasn't around. From a distance, in writing, his "mountainous" physicality is one more thing that makes it easier to portray him as a brute — an ugly brute. The photographs of this man that accompany any article about him stir up only revulsion, not sympathy. Why would you not have won with words?

But Weinstein didn’t just exert physical power. He also employed legal and professional and economic power. He supposedly had every employee sign elaborate, binding nondisclosure agreements. He gave jobs to people who might otherwise work to bring him down, and gave gobs of money to other powerful people, who knows how much, but perhaps just enough to keep them from listening to ugly rumors that might circulate among young people, among less powerful people. For decades, the reporters who tried to tell the story of Harvey Weinstein butted up against the same wall of sheer force and immovable power that was leveraged against those ambitious actors, the vulnerable assistants, the executives whose careers, salaries, and reputations were in his hands.

That was even more material to use against him, and it's material that goes against all you reporters now. If you don't know how to get a story where a corrupt miscreant is using legal maneuverings and payoffs to suppress it, how are you a journalist?!

Something has changed. Sources have gone on the record. It’s worth it to wonder why. Perhaps because of shifts in how we understand these kinds of abuses. Recent years have seen scores of women, finding strength and some kind of power in numbers, come forward and tell their stories about Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump.

So! Now, we get to the meat of it. When the targets were right wing (or perceived as right wing), like Clarence Thomas all those years ago in the pre-Clinton era, the journalists knew how to get at the story. But they did it so aggressively and brought down such big targets that the protection of Harvey Weinstein was too obvious. The wall of silence broke.

But now our consciousness has been raised.

Oh, please. You had consciousness before. Take responsibility for the politically skewed reporting that has infected sexual harassment stories since the Clarence Thomas/Bill Clinton combination that shamed political liberals in the 1990s.

There's one more thing, according to Traister:

I saw Harvey Weinstein earlier this year, at a Planned Parenthood celebration. I was struck... by his physical diminishment; he seemed small and frail, and, when I caught sight of him in May, he appeared to be walking with a cane.

So what are you saying? You feel better about kicking a weak little guy? You really were holding back because of his erstwhile mountainousness?

He has also lost power in the movie industry....

This is a confession of the absence of courage in journalism. You should be going after the most powerful people and go after them when they are doing their damage, not tell us about it after age and bad fortune have done half the work of laying him low.

ADDED: "I saw Harvey Weinstein earlier this year, at a Planned Parenthood celebration. I was struck... by his physical diminishment; he seemed small and frail...." How awful to see the words "Planned Parenthood" come up when the subject is the author's comfort in going after someone who is weak and small! This is one more effect of the liberal cocoon. Traister must not have noticed the grisly irony.

161 comments:

Dennis Prager often talks about how many good people don't have the courage to stand up for what is right. Courage is difficult. Lately he has talked about conservatives and Trump supporters acting like Maranos (the Jews who pretended to be Christians while privately practicing their real religion [so as not to be killed]). It takes courage to be "not leftist" when your job or career is at stake.

I saw Harvey Weinstein earlier this year, at a Planned Parenthood celebration. I was struck... by his physical diminishment; he seemed small and frail, and, when I caught sight of him in May, he appeared to be walking with a cane.

I saw a photo of Harvey taken yesterday and he is definitely not small or frail.Word is his brother outed Harvey in an internecine battle for control of the Weinstein Company.Journalists were fed the damaging information—force fed one might say.

If one assumes that journalists seek power through self-marketing, and that journalists are wary of publishing stories that could hurt their self-marketing, and that journalists pounce on a widely known inside story when the timing seems just right and the fruit is over-ripe, then one would get the performance we are seeing now.

"For decades, the reporters who tried to tell the story of Harvey Weinstein butted up against the same wall of sheer force and immovable power that was leveraged against those ambitious actors, the vulnerable assistants, the executives whose careers, salaries, and reputations were in his hands."

If you think about it, Mitt Romney butted up against the other side of that same wall.

New York Magazine reports (Ashley) Judd told the NARAL “Men for Choice” crowd about how she became pregnant after she was raped. She said she made the “excruciating decision” to have an abortion, and now she is glad she did.

Rose McGowan on Twitter: This is important, please share. 'I had an abortion': Shunning politics, finding a voice @CNN

Let the filthy become more filthy. Today's revelations of the abuse of power seem like a Blue glow in a dark room after a luminal spray. There is so much blood everywhere. And life goes on picking out scapegoats to bear our guilt. The mystery is why Weinstein was sacrificed now. Best guess is the Media he used has a new master and is sacrificing Weinstein as the substitute for their guilt.

If I ever run for politics, I'd say flat out: "No, I'm not giving it back to some asshole so that they can do more asshole things with their money. I'm going to use it to further the causes I've told people we were going to further. Frankly, I'd like it if every asshole gave me their money, because I'm not going to change for them, so I'd rather have their money than them."

Of course, I'd be a terrible politician because even though I know I'd do those things, no one else would trust me.

The establishments and elites that create our political and entertainment culture have no idea how fragile it all is—how fragile it seems to people living normal, less privileged lives. That is because nothing is fragile for them. They’re barricaded behind the things the influential have, from good neighborhoods to security alarms, doormen and gates. They’re not dark in their imagining of the future because history has never been dark for them; it’s been sunshine, which they expect to continue. They sail on, oblivious to the legitimate anxieties of their countrymen who live near the edge.

Ugly creatures like Weinstein and Michael Moore think they will always be able to lord it over fellow Americans.

Curious George, yeah, no lefties in the list. But that's not because journalists are in some kind of club that permits no criticism of lefties.

Witness the current tidal wave against Weinstein.

Righties often proclaim that lefties are only interested in power and money. That's correct, for the lefties on top. The peasant lefties they command think it's a moral thing, a way to bring good to the world.

This is a main problem in politics: differentiating between the people on top and the people they command. It's an old topic, but Americans today seem unaware of it.

Fighting Clinton, Letterman, and the rest presents no money or power opportunities for the people on top. Why do it? Righties would say, "because it's the correct thing to do!" Lefties say, "meh".

"Take responsibility for the politically skewed reporting that has infected sexual harassment stories since the Clarence Thomas/Bill Clinton combination that [should have] shamed political liberals in the 1990s."

Broken record says: this was never about ethics or politics. It's about power and money. Learn it, breathe it, say it out loud. Nobody cares about HW. Probably even his Yorkie hates him. The bubble broke.

A very small excerpt from one chapter of the Book of Mormon, in which the narrator is decrying the decadence of the once free society at that time:

"4 And seeing the people in a state of such awful wickedness, and [mafia-like people] filling the judgment-seats—having usurped the power and authority of the land; laying aside the commandments of God, and not in the least aright before him; doing no justice unto the children of men;

5 Condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money; and moreover to be held in office at the head of government, to rule and do according to their wills, that they might get gain and glory of the world, and, moreover, that they might the more easily commit adultery, and steal, and kill, and do according to their own wills—"

Mormons have been reading this since the mid 1800s, so this all comes as no surprise.

Another consideration is competition with being scooped. The person that leaked this was very smart to do it to two places, causing competition. Drudge has also changed or breached the wall of silence.

Oh, bullshit. Harvey was another liberal, like Bill Clinton, so you pushed the obvious principles to the side and protected him. The only fuzziness is the blur imposed by politics, and once you let that in, you have no principle.

THe media circling the wagons around a predator who supports the correct politics through generous donations and awesome parties is unsurprising.

For every woman now coming forward with tales of lewdness, there are multiple who went along with it to advance their careers. Once established, they had an interest in concealing how they got their start and/or career-making break. It may not have been their talent.

Shame on the New York Times for continuing to suppress the highly credible Juanita Broaddrick's claim that she was forcibly raped by a young Bill Clinton, and for their efforts to again place him in the White House for four years.

This includes jocular depictions of profane, belligerent yet liberal-friendly Hollywood types like Ari Emanuel and Harvey Weinstein, leaving out the sexual harassment of course.

From Wiki.... Depictions in mediaHarvey Weingard, a character portrayed by Maury Chaykin on the HBO TV series Entourage, is based on Weinstein. Although the character is portrayed as an intimidating and aggressive producer, Weinstein has reportedly responded positively to the character. The foul-mouthed character Malcolm Tucker in the BBC series The Thick of It is based on Hollywood agents and producers, notably Harvey Weinstein and the team at Miramax that has been "long celebrated for Malcolm-like behavior," according to actor Peter Capaldi.

There's an article in today's NY Post about a television journalist who claims that Weinstein exposed himself and started masturbating in front of her during the course of an interview. Clearly, Weinstein meant this as off the record, background information, and the reporter has violated his confidence. If reporters can't adhere to professional standards, we all suffer.

I wonder if the floodgates will open. He certainly harassed more than eight women over the course of his life. . He has lawyered up in an impressive way, so maybe he can minimize the damage. In any event, the people in Hollywood and the media are going to look bad. They're not revealing Weinstein's sins but their own hypocrisy and/or cowardice.

What a great week coming to this blog.HW makes me think about JFK and Camelot (or per George Carlin "well, it really should’ve been called “Come-a-lot” cause that’s what he did, he came a lot!").HW is/was probably worse, but JFK telling 19 year old intern Mimi Alford to give Dave Powers a blow job in the WH pool in JFK's presence, etc. has to rank pretty high on the list of disgusting abuses of power against young woman. All these people knew about JFK, press members (hell be was banging the sister of Ben Bradlee - she was later shot to death on the towpath), but game him a pass. I think Bob Ellison is right - its mainly about power. Would anyone have advanced their career going after JFK, or trying to publish stories about his abuse of young women? A few people considered it. Maybe some of them even died because they considered it.

Shame on the New York Times for continuing to suppress the highly credible Juanita Broaddrick's claim.

The second sentence here gives the lie to the first - whatever the reason for "bigger players" wanting to shiv this dirtbag, it has nothing to do with decency, or feminism (hahahahaha), so no kudos for some little demons roasting another little demon. Let 'em enjoy their intra-hell gang wars.

There's no percentage in coming forward and denouncing a liberal icon. On the other hand, a woman who reports a transgression by Ailes or Donald Trump can reliably expect to be celebrated for her courage and feminist principles. No reporter will dig deeper to see if she ever cheats on her husband or whatever.....,,There was that disturbing story about how JFK told his intern to give one of his other underlings a blow job. Munchausen rape. A new frontier in sexual perversion. When the story broke, I remember Chris Matthews explaining how great men often had great flaws. The story is no longer repeated and is not considered a relevant part of JFK's biography.......I would recommend to all men with eccentric libidinal urges to become prominent in liberal politics. It's your one chance of survival in this harsh world.

EDH: Ashley Judd being the prime example, you have to wonder how much suppressed rage against liberal Hollywood Weinstein types has been projected onto Trump.

Interesting point. A lot of feminist rage (Hollywood and non-Hollywood) does seem to be displaced from personal experience to some "out there" abstraction ("the patriarchy", "Trump"), so that the real problem doesn't have to be dealt with. That would entail risk, and might also lead to a lot of uncomfortable questioning of the rest of liberal fantasy web.

Well said, Ann. Politics often gets in the way of principle, and making politics a righteous cause and feminism your highest moral light can more easily facilitate the kind of moral bankruptcy on display here (Clinton inc, Weinstein etc)

After all the talk about 'ethics,' groups, identities, oppression etc. (which flow from her principles), Traister, like all of us, is left with her own choices and circumstances.

Caving in to career and fear is VERY common in human affairs. So, too, is the powerful man exercising his power for personal pleasure. I'm sure it's tempting, though the man is by all accounts a cretin.

Doubling down on whatever principles you have after a personal failure (Weinstein did what little of that he could too) is VERY common in human affairs. Thus the 'expert' Traister lecturing us and hanging herself with her own rope comes as little surprise. Thanks for the lesson.

My problem with these principles is that they don't promote enough wisdom and understanding of human nature, nor ultimately the possibility of objective and real knowledge (a thornier problem) to sustain liberty. They confuse moral, social and political goods and are a tornado of post-Enlightenment ideas which tear-down everything in their path.

A lot of people truly don't want the responsibility that comes with freedom, and in their crusade, erode the freedom of others.

I am glad I do not know how to trigger this exceptional-for-normals writing because I think I would over do it.

It has taken me over a decade, but I finally understand what Limbaugh was talking about when he said if he could think exactly as another person for a day, he would like to be able to think like Dr. Charley Krauthammer thinks, only with me it's Althouse after Buckley.

For all of the faults of modern feminism I think even the most severe critic has to recognize that feminism was - still is - needed. Not THIS feminism, the one we have; but the one that emerged from abuses like this that women - many women or at least too many women - had to put up with.

Think of your sister or daughter having to go through this? You'd be outraged, you'd want to punch the creeps out.

The Liberals were "outraged" over Thomas but strangely reluctant to criticize Bill. Its the Conservatives who were upset at Kennedy killing a women, the liberals seemed strangely silent. Look at the liberals/Leftists on this site. Fully of OUTRAGE at Bill O' Reilly and "Grab them by the Pussy" but strangely silent on Harvey Weinstein.

How many other Weinstein's are out there preying on women while being protected by the liberal MSM. And why did the NYT go after him NOW, after being silent for 15 years?

"It has taken me over a decade, but I finally understand what Limbaugh was talking about when he said if he could think exactly as another person for a day, he would like to be able to think like Dr. Charley Krauthammer thinks, only with me it's Althouse after Buckley."

Delightful as it is to prick the bubbles of liberal hypocrisy, I don’t believe liberal politics was the primary reason people covered for Harvey Weinstein, as you imply here. His story is remarkably similar to Roger Ailes’, and people covered for Ailes for years as well.

Ann, it seems like you're leveling very confident judgment from afar. Have you ever had to struggle with a decision about speaking truth to power where your job or reputation or money would be on the line? Is there any chance you don't know the whole story? Seems a bit glib to reduce it to "bullshit."

"Blogger PWS said...Ann, it seems like you're leveling very confident judgment from afar. Have you ever had to struggle with a decision about speaking truth to power where your job or reputation or money would be on the line? Is there any chance you don't know the whole story? Seems a bit glib to reduce it to "bullshit.""

Traister's job/reputation were on the line? That says a lot right there.

When the Access Hollywood stuff came out, normally that would have torpedoed anyone's campaign. But when the left -- and some here -- went on and on and on about how horrified and horrifying it was for someone to use "the p word" and grabbing crotches, the whole country knew that their feigned shock was complete and total BS.

And so people not only gave Trump a pass, they recognized who the real enemy is and Trump even gained support from it all. That was certainly the time when I felt that we could NEVER allow these people to have power ever again, after months of planning to not vote at all.

"Oh, bullshit. Harvey was another liberal, like Bill Clinton, so you pushed the obvious principles to the side and protected him. The only fuzziness is the blur imposed by politics, and once you let that in, you have no principle."

Bravo, AA. It also explains why Harvey started yapping up the NRA in his ridiculous statement. In Hollywood, powerful men who sexually harass women, get a pass as long as they fervently sing from the Democrat playbook.

That's the danger of turning a social movement into a political movement. A social movement can prosper by doing the right thing, but a political movement has to be on the winning team.

... the story felt fuzzier, harder to tell about Harvey: the notion of the “casting couch” still had an almost romantic reverberation...

It wasn't really harder to tell. Re-read the New York Times article. They reference some legal settlements, and quote a couple of people telling their stories. No harder to write than a story about a shoddy sewer main.

It's only harder to tell when you've internalized that you're on one team, and that you need to be a team player. I.E., when you've become a political movement rather than a social movement.

I now understand why these Hollywood "feminists" and newspeople think that all accusations of sexual assault are to be believed. They live in a culture where powerful people do get away with anything, and yet, they project their distorted view of men onto the rest of America, which is nothing like it.

Fix your own house first. The rest of us do not live in such an awful world.

If Anita Hill was telling the truth about Clarence Thomas, why did she follow him from one job to another?

I don't understand why people believe Anita Hill.

There is quite the contrast between the alleged sexual misdeeds of a Clarence Thomas and a Bill Clinton. I'll skip describing the very long list of the alleged sexual misdeeds of Bill Clinton, but unless I missed something wasn't the heart of Anita Hill's complaint about Clarence Thomas that he expressed a sexual interest in her. And not even directly!

I mean it is not hard to believe that such a thing could happen. It's only one of the more common interactions between men and women.

Anita Hill claims she was disturbed by this alleged behavior. But then she goes out of her way to keep the presence of Clarence Thomas in her environment. Is this believable? Only if we allow for the complexity of human behavior, where what she says may have been true except that she wasn't really all that disturbed and has edited from her memory that she was attracted to Clarence Thomas.

The other possibility is the whole story was invented out of thin air.

So what are we to make of the fact that so many women believe Anita Hill?

If a woman's writing includes not only known falsehoods like the idea that Anita Hill was sexually harassed but the ludicrous whopper that nobody in journalism was interested in feminism in the 1990s (!), why should I believe her evidence-free vignette about the time the villain of the moment committed felony assault in front of a crowd of people with cameras, none of whom have mentioned the episode in public in the subsequent fifteen years?

Trump never actually admitted to being a social liberal, but that he was aware of their lifestyle. This line of reasoning a la Kiev-manufactured "Russian dossier", would have been enough to destroy someone's credibility, but the long train of the left's abuses, and the fact that he stood his ground, partially inoculated him to the real and invented machinations of social and economic liberals, progressives, and leviathan, too.

Nor do I. I remember women who believed Hill predicting that of course Thomas would continue to harass women after his appointment to SCOTUS and he would be able to do so without fear of losing his job. Except he hasn't. Sexual harassers in positions of power don't just harass one woman; they're like Bill Clinton and Weinstein and Ted Kennedy. It's ridiculous to think that Thomas was somehow so smitten with the charms of Anita Hill that she alone induced him to act inappropriately.

Was it the thrill of exhibition or of intimidating a young female that got him up and off so quickly?I'm sort of impressed with his 55 yo plumbing (it was allegedly 10 years ago), but I've never tried boner pills or testosterone supplements.

She could so easily have ridiculed him and escaped--or kicked him in the nuts.

Can we finally stop pretending that "Feminism" is anything more than another Democrat identity group, people primed to take offense at the slightest alleged harassment if and only if the offender is not a member of the Democrat power structure or another Leftist identity group. Its just a leftist GOTV and fundraising listserve.

Hillarywood is filled with jerks who ignore the pedophilia and actual misogynist underbelly of Hillaryood. All for the glory of the progressive faux-go-gooder Meryl Streep progressive church.

I'm afraid it's even worse than that. I've been in the business for a long time working at two networks and two studios. The librul thing, for the most part, is a charade. They talk privately about the Schvartzes, the schvoo-boogies, and the chukkers and beaners. Even more appalling is the frank admission that lib politics and paying higher taxes are the buy-off to keep the peace so that their gated communities and Rollers are safe from harm. And I'm not just talking about the older, fat, rich guys.

They think that this social compact gives them immunity since there are plenty of deplorables out there to draw fire. So far, they've been absolutely correct.

Weinstein is so gross. I would have thought that every woman's nightmare is somehow falling into the power of someone who acts like Weinstein AND is gross like him. But apparently in Hollywood it's just the price of admission and there are plenty willing to pay the price. And there are, or were, plenty of reporters willing to make lame excuses for him, as Althouse points out. But why is the news-media so lame? Surely, it's different from Hollywood and, oh, for sure, women reporters aren't being subjected this kind of outrageous exploitation.

Exiledonmainstreet, I'm worried that we are denying human nature. I'm not defending Weinstein, whose misdeeds are extraordinary. I'm talking about defending the normal male who is almost compulsively attracted to at least some women. Sexual harassment laws put men at a great disadvantage because you've passed a law against what is basically male nature.

Sure there are some men who have successfully mastered the art of suppressing the expression of their sexual attraction to women at work. Note that I didn't say they suppressed their sexual desires. But there's plenty of men that can't do this, not always anyway.

The thing about Anita Hill isn't that I think that it's all that improbable that Clarence Thomas expressed a sexual attraction to Anita Hill. The problem is that Anita Hill is almost certainly lying and that this is an abuse of power on Anita Hill's part. I imagine that there are two narratives that stand a good chance of being true.

First, something like what she recounted happened except it wasn't that a big deal to her and her use of it was purely motivated as a tool to block Thomas from getting on to the Supreme Court.

Or two, something like what she recounted happened and it was a big deal to her because she was sexually frustrated and really wanted something to happen and it didn't. I find that plausible because it's consistent with what she did and the fact that women are sexual beings and that's a pretty strong thing for women too although expressed differently from men. Then she takes that experience which she has no trouble remembering except for her own motivations which she has trouble acknowledging, which I believe is true for most people. And then from there it is driven by her politics.

Now a feminist might look at this and say either way you're believing that Thomas 'sexually harassed' Anita Hill. But that's a problem with feminism because you've a made a law against males. You've found a standard that men are going to fail at, not always, but way too often.

If we are going to allow this ideology where we stack the odds so much against men, then we better allow companies to legally discriminate against women and not hire women if they don't want this dynamic. If it's otherwise you're doing the reverse and discriminating against men, which is where I think the actual law has put us.

I guess these dipshit reporters are taking a moment or two off from giving each other awards for bravery and talking about how courageous they are, how without their noble daring our very democracy would die (in the dark!) to now whine "oooh, we couldn't break this story, it was just too scarrrrry--feel sorry for us!"Which is it?

Hell, it'd be more dignified to just come out and admit you're all Leftists and you have a strong bias about publishing anything that you know might hurt the Left. Smart Life Long Republicans tell me there's "no such thing as the Media" but things like this happening certainly argue that there is, and that as expected it's Leftist to its rotten core.

It's interesting how every article I've seen, so far, about Weinstein includes a select list of "hideous men" that always ends with "Donald Trump". I guess if the odious Weinstein is no longer useful to the left as a Dem donor or career builder, they may as well make his downfall useful as a tool for smearing Trump. As they say, "Never let a good crisis go to waste!"

It's so much easier to go left. I think that's why you see so many high profile people being leftists. If you go right, the press will love negative stories about you. If you go left, that press doesn't care about your sins unless forced.

How does this Harvey Weinstein story help the Democrats? Here's Douthat's meandering column, hot of the presses. See, in particular, most of the comments. I'd say it's not worth denting your monthly NYT article ration, but what is worth reading at the NYT anymore? Can't remember the last time I hit their paywall.

The early bird may get the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese. Most people are herd animals, and will only dare to make themselves conspicuous if it's to be seen by others in the herd. That's not being brave, it's just being ambitious.